Fossilized Second Language Grammars: The Acquisition of Grammatical GenderThis monograph is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the mechanisms and causes of successful and unsuccessful adult second language acquisition. Couched within a generative framework, the study explores how a learner's first language and the age at which they acquire their second language may contribute to the L2 knowledge that they can ultimately attain. The empirical study focuses on a group of very advanced L2 speakers, and through a series of tests aims to discover what underpins their near mastery of grammatical gender and other grammatical properties. The book explores an account of persistent selective divergence based on the idea that child and adult learners are fundamentally similar, except that in adults the L1 plays the role of a fairly rigid filter of the linguistic input. The impossibility of representing the new target language other than by using the building blocks of the previously established L1 is argued to be the main reason why near but not totally native like language representations are formed and become established in adult L2 learners. |
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acquired adjectives adult L2 learners adult SLA agreement in contexts Anticanonical areas assumptions bilingual canonical Chapter Chinese speakers Chomsky cognitive critical period Critical Period Hypothesis discussion Distributed Morphology evidence example exposure f sing F]LI feminine Figure fucsia functional features gen gen gen group gen L1 group gender agreement gender assignment gender clues gender features gender marking grammatical gender hypothesis 1.5 inflectional interaction interpretation investigated L1 and L2 L1 gen speakers L1 Spanish L1 speakers L2 acquisition L2 grammar language learning lexical items linguistic main effects markers masculine morphology morphophonological nativelike nativelike knowledge NNSS noun class nouns NS/NNS null hypothesis Orwell's problem parameter PFFs phonological Plato's problem predictions proficiency Pron pronouns proposal Psycholinguistic Second Language Acquisition Section semantic sentences significant speakers of L2 strategies subjects subset suggests syntactic clues syntax Table targetlike task Test items Tsimpli ungrammatical uninterpretable variable verbs wh-movement word